Article
Rationalization in Every-Day Life
Ernest Jones read this paper at the first psychoanalytic congress, in Salzburg in April 1908, and printed it that summer in Morton Prince's Journal of Abnormal Psychology. It is where the term ‘rationalisation’ enters psychoanalysis. Jones starts from Freud's demonstration that many mental processes, in the normal as in the ill, have causes the person neither knows nor will admit. He sorts the mechanisms that hide these causes into two classes. In the first class the person holds that a thought or act needs no explanation. Slips and chance actions are put down to accident. Choices shaped by hidden motives or by custom, such as a number picked ‘freely’ or a tie worn every day, are claimed as acts of will, so that asking where they come from seems absurd. Jones reads this resistance to inquiry as a sign that the real source is unacceptable, and finds it behind many fixed religious, ethical and political beliefs. In the second class the person offers an explanation, but a false one, because everyone needs to give a connected and rational account of themselves. False explanations formed mainly for oneself he calls evasions; those formed with an eye to the opinion of one's circle he calls rationalisations. There is no sharp line between them. His examples are a young man who believes he chose his family's sect after weighing the evidence, and physicians who still prescribe valerian for hysteria. The remedy was once justified by the theory of the wandering womb and is now explained as an ‘antispasmodic’. Jones closes by arguing that the new psychology will show how opinions are formed and how true but unwelcome ideas can best be spread, since restating the evidence is not enough.
Main ideas
- Most mental processes, in the normal as in the ill, arise from causes unknown to the person, and feeling shapes judgement, belief and conduct far more than academic psychology has allowed.
- The mechanisms that hide these causes are more elaborate the more strongly the person resists the feeling they conceal.
- In one class of concealment the person holds that no explanation is needed: slips and chance actions are put down to accident, and acts determined by hidden motives or by custom are claimed as free acts of will.
- Treating a question about the origin of a belief or habit as absurd is a sign that its real source is unacceptable; many fixed religious, ethical, political and hygienic beliefs are of this kind.
- In the other class the person offers a plausible but false explanation, driven by the need everyone feels to give a connected, logical account of themselves.
- False explanations made mainly for oneself are ‘evasions’, and those made with an eye to the opinion of one's circle are ‘rationalisations’, with no sharp line between them; with this the term enters psychoanalysis.
- Social surroundings instil beliefs indirectly, by making the arguments for them seem more sensible; the arguments that persuade one sect are scorned by another.
- A practice can outlive its original reason and be given a new one: valerian, prescribed for hysteria on the theory of the wandering womb, is now explained as an ‘antispasmodic’.
- Studying these mechanisms will show how opinion is formed and how true but unwelcome ideas can be spread, since merely restating the evidence often fails.
What it shows
- 1908
Ernest Jones introduced Rationalization
Jones coined the term in a paper first given in 1908 and later reprinted as the opening chapter of his Papers on Psycho-Analysis; Freud and the later literature adopted it.
- 1901
Sigmund Freud introduced Parapraxis
Freud set out the theory of slips in Zur Psychopathologie des Alltagslebens, printed in the Monatsschrift für Psychiatrie und Neurologie in 1901 and as a book in 1904: the forgetting of names and intentions, slips of the tongue and pen, misreadings, bungled and chance actions are treated as meaningful acts with unconscious motives rather than accidents. In the Dora case he refers readers back to that treatise, and Jones in 1908 cites its sections on slips of the tongue and pen, bungled actions and chance actions as Freud's.
- 1908
Ernest Jones developed Parapraxis
Jones takes the insistence that a slip or chance action had no cause, or was due to chance or inattention, as one of the ways a person keeps the source of a mental process out of consciousness; the resistance to asking where it came from signals that the source is unacceptable. Analysis, he holds, always finds a precise cause.
Parapraxis derives from Repression
In the classical account a parapraxis results from interference by a thought or wish that has been pushed out of consciousness because it is unacceptable: the forgetting, slip or mislaying shows both the repressed content and the resistance against it. The Dora case speaks of acts consciousness 'will not know of', and Jones ties the concealment of a slip's source to its unacceptable nature.